New On Netflix: Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

Brandon Routh made for a very moving and more than capable Man of Steel in Bryan Singer‘s lovely and underrated Superman Returns but for some reason didn’t become a movie star after playing one of the most iconic comic book characters of all time; maybe if Singer’s film hadn’t felt so much like tiptoeing through the Christopher Reeve Museum, the rest of Hollywood would’ve seen its star as something more than just a ghostly reminder of a fallen hero. The end result is that Routh isn’t scoring Oscar nominations in post-DC Comics projects like his counterpart, Christian Bale, but is instead starring in uninspired dreck like Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (which is itself based on a pretty great comic book series that deserves a lot better than this), in which he plays a human in charge of keeping the denizens of New Orleans’ supernatural underworld in line. Routh’s Superman pal, Sam Huntington (who played Jimmy Olsen), embarrasses himself as Dylan’s obnoxious zombie sidekick as Taye Diggs wonders why his career after Rent didn’t go a little better. The whole thing plays out like a really bad episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — which, let’s face it, wasn’t as good a show as we thought it was in the first place.